I was watching TV this morning and I was drawn to a story about the mental competences that affect some of our leaders. This is almost exclusively related to the age of a Representative or Senator, regardless of their political parties. The Senator implicated is Senator Feinstein from California. Regardless of the gender or political affiliation of the Senator or Representative, this blindness towards what we would call Alzheimer’s has to stop. We cannot keep handing the keys to the nation to Grandma or Grandpa any more than we would allow them to have the car keys to drive on the roads.

The answer is probably a tie-in between term-limits and age limits. Some people age differently than others. IF a person serves in Congress for 18 years (9x HR or 3x Sen) they should then be required to walk away regardless of their age. Likewise, once a Rep or Senator reaches the federal retirement age, they should then be required to give up their seat at the next election, and anyone following them should not be allowed to run if their eligibility will be impacted by the other guidelines already mentioned.

If someone wants to run for Senate at the age of 62, and the retirement age is 67, they should be disqualified because they will have reached the mandated retirement age before the end of their projected term. This applies whether they have already been in Congress or not.

Age does not always equal wisdom. It is too dangerous for us to continue to keep doing business the old-fashioned way.

Bored and cold. Those are the two words that sum things up early on this Friday morning as I wake from yet another night here in the hospital. I’ve been here for more than a week, and will probably be here for almost another week before I’m discharged and able to return home again.

Because this hospital is quite a distance from the apartment, Hal can only manage to visit me every other day. Sadly, today is one of those off days. I won’t see him until tomorrow sometime. I’m just about done with all of the tests here, and dialysis is complete as well. My big event for today will be physical therapy and building up my strength for surgery on Monday. Once the surgery is done , plus two days recovery time, I should finally be sent home.

I’ve passed the “what do I do when I’ve done everything possible” phase in my hospital stays. Now the only new things are from unexpected external stimuli and events. While my sleeping has improved, I still need to regulate how much sleep I get as well as the quality of sleep.

Even the meals have become terribly redundant to me. This hospital follows a much more restrictive diet plan than the one I was in before had. This means far less choices and variety for me. While it will help me to lose weight, it fails to make the hunger go away. If I’m lucky I’ll get two pancakes for breakfast while I’ll ignore the sickeningly sweet scrambled eggs that they try to push with every breakfast meal here.

Lunch and dinner offer very little relief from the mealtime monotony here. The diet I’m on offers practically no variety to me at all. I’m halfway to a hunger strike, albeit an unofficial one.

I’ll keep trying to find topics to keep me writing, by for now bored and cold will have to suffice.